


Losing

by enchainedstar



Category: Cardfight!! Vanguard
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Blood and Injury, Consensual Kink, F/F, Implied Relationships, Knifeplay, Roleplay, Rope Bondage, Torture, Torture Roleplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 17:11:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17248172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enchainedstar/pseuds/enchainedstar
Summary: It takes Tokoha a few moments to realize. “Right,” she says. “You’re a healer,” she continues, and laughs. There’s something manic in the sound of her own laughter, something she knows Hashima Rin will identify as the beginnings of panic.“After a fashion,” Hashima says, her voice overly bright, and then Tokoha feels the scalpel pressing against her shoulder.(Alternate "medieval fantasy"-type universe where a war has recently ended.  Torture roleplay.)





	Losing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [litteringfire (heartrapier)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartrapier/gifts).



> This was written for a CFV Secret Santa exchange over on twitter. I really hope my recipient enjoys this!

The old dungeons beneath Fort Hashima were once as old as the castle itself, the stone and steel of its walls and bars driven into the earth by magic before the fort proper was erected above it. Magical wards laced into the stone itself had made any notion of tunneling beneath the castle and taking it from below “impracticable,” in Shion’s words, though he had been careful to commend Tokoha for the idea anyway even as he proposed his own.

It was ironic, given those carefully laid out plans, that Tokoha found herself in the dungeons beneath Hashima anyway. And she hadn’t even needed to tunnel her way in.

When Tokoha says so, smooth fingers cup her chin and jaw, their perfect nails pressing lightly into her skin. “I’m glad that you were spared the effort,” Hashima says, and even with the blindfold on, Tokoha *knows* that the older woman is smiling her surface smile. The shallow one, the one she wears in public that shows none of the cruelty that Tokoha has come to expect from Lady Hashima Rin. “All you had to do was lose, Anjou.”

\--

Here is the scene’s premise: The war is over. The power of the Dragon, and that of the other guilds who would not bed the knee to the Sanctuary, is broken. Tokoha doesn’t know the fate of her companions, if only because Hashima hasn’t yet chosen to draw back the curtain on their fates just yet. She knows only that her brother, long a thorn in Sanctuary’s side, is being kept compliant by the knowledge that the youngest Anjou is prisoner to one of Kanzaki’s adherents. Which of them held her, Hashima had said while explaining things to her, was a mystery to Anjou Mamoru and anyone else outside of Kanzaki’s inner circle.

“A shell game,” Tokoha said at the time, her voice tight with stress at that point, for the blindfold and its darkness had been unfamiliar to her then.

“If your dear big brother remembered the way he slighted me all those years ago, I think he might guess,” Hashima had replied, and in retrospect…in hindsight, Tokoha feels sure that she had been smiling then as well. In the darkness and the almost unnatural chill of the dungeons beneath the fort, all that is left to her are her restraints, and Hashima’s voice, and occasionally her touch. Sometimes they’re all she can remember, which is worse. “But yes, Anjou. As long as your older brother and any remaining malcontents under his banner are kept guessing, they are unlikely to make any decisive move, and that gives us more time to tighten the noose.” Her warm fingers had wrapped gently around Tokoha’s neck, then, and her voice and even her breath had been close when she continued, “You do more having lost this war than you ever did while fighting it. Isn’t that funny, Anjou?”

Tokoha’s only response — the only one she had been able to make — had been to spit in Hashima Rin’s face. She knew she hit her mark, because in the space of a second, she felt that hand move away from her neck, and then the open-handed slap had cracked against Tokoha’s mouth and jaw.

In the following silence, Hashima’s breathing had been ragged and strange, but finally she said, “You need to learn to be a better loser…but don’t worry, I’ll teach you.”

—

In the now, as before, Tokoha is bound above and below. Her wrists and forearms are lashed together behind her back, tightly without cutting off her circulation, and she can feel that she hangs by those bindings from some sort of peg. A foot up from her ankles, her legs are similarly bound. The bindings, and the blindfold, are the only things that Tokoha has been allowed to wear in this game of Hashima’s.

“You know as well as I do that leaving those pretty things of yours on would be such a waste,” Hashima says when Tokoha remarks on her nudity. “And if you feel cold now…well.” Tokoha feels Hashima’s fingertips skating from her shoulder downward, tracing the outside of her arm. Tokoha’s skin tingles strangely in the wake of Hashima’s touch.

It takes Tokoha a few moments to realize. “Right,” she says. “You’re a healer,” she continues, and laughs. There’s something manic in the sound of her own laughter, something she knows Hashima Rin will identify as the beginnings of panic.

“After a fashion,” Hashima says, her voice overly bright, and then Tokoha feels the scalpel pressing against her shoulder.

The blade is cold, some deep part of Anjou Tokoha’s mind recognizes even as the rest of her screams at the feeling of the little blade moving downward less than an inch from where it first pierces her skin.

“You saw what I did to the old dungeons when they brought you in, right?” Hashima says once Tokoha has stopped screaming. “The walls, the floor…all whiter than a tooth. And sterile, and kept that way by magic. Just like this little toy here.” She applies the slightest bit of pressure with the hand holding the scalpel, and Tokoha barely manages to keep from crying out. “The white makes everything else stand out,” she remarks a moment later. “Especially blood.”

“I shouldn’t have spared your life,” Tokoha says, the words making her feel sick. It’s important that she say them, though.

“If you hadn’t, maybe things would be different,” Hashima says. The fingers of her other hand, having reached the bindings just above Tokoha’s wrist, begin to move up. The feeling of their useless healing being channeled to the wrong place — her shoulder is open, it’s bleeding, and even having expected it her mind is still having trouble working with the blood running down her arm in hot rivulets and the cold of the scalpel threatening to move further down — is almost like a taunt. “Oh, I won’t say that our positions would be reversed — I can’t see you doing this — but still.” Tokoha can hear the smile on the other woman’s face, and it’s the secret one, the one that exposes all her cruelty to anyone unfortunate enough to glimpse it.

Before Tokoha can think of any words, put forth any kind of response, the blade and the healing fingertips begin to move toward one another. This time, she lets out a ragged gasp that chokes off into nothing as the scalpel moves with patient, tortuous slowness, dragging down, dragging her down. Her thighs flex.

“I wish you could see yourself right now. You were so pent up, because you didn’t know how to lose…but now I’m letting it all out, Anjou. This is what losing is,” Hashima continues, and the blade continues down. Tokoha isn’t sure if she’s ever been this aware of her body, but at the same time, she can’t fully wrap her head around just how much or how little the blade has moved. How big is the cut in her arm? Inches long? A foot? She can hear her blood hitting the floor, hear her own hyper-rapid breathing. “Well, when you’ve lost to me, anyway,” Hashima adds, and then laughs easily. There’s no calculation there, just cruel joy at what she’s doing.

Tokoha doesn’t realize that she’s been struggling to free her arms until she stops. She stops because, all in one motion, the scalpel moves all the way down to her elbow, parting her flesh along the way. When she opens her mouth to scream, the scalpel moves away from her skin, and suddenly Hashima’s hand, wet with blood, is over her open mouth.

“Why bother?” the woman says. “I’m the only one who can hear you in here, and even if some servant was in here with me, they wouldn’t move to help you. I told you, you’ve lost. You’re in my power. This,” she says, and suddenly her other hand is moving over the open wound in Tokoha’s arm, healing it shut in reverse as it slides up her skin. “…Is losing.”

When Hashima’s hand moves away from her mouth, all that escapes Tokoha’s mouth is a sob. Her tears aren’t as hot as the blood was, but they feel like they’re burning as they run down her face past the blindfold. A moment later, the blindfold is ripped away, and Tokoha can see for the first time in hours.

Rin’s face is flushed, but the smile Tokoha knows was there is gone, replaced by a mixture of scorn and concern. More of the latter than the former, she thinks, the involuntary sobbing fit winding down now that she can see again. “Are you…okay?” Rin asks.

Impossibly, Tokoha laughs, her throat sore. “You weren’t supposed…” Shocking herself, she starts to cry a little again.

“Gods. Your entire family is insufferable.” Getting down on one knee for a moment, Rin uses the blade in her hand to cut through the strong green vines binding Tokoha’s ankles together. When she looks up again — undistracted for now by Tokoha’s nudity — she asks, “should I get Kumi?”

“She…” Tokoha swallows, and it *hurts.* She hadn’t been expecting to break down this early. “She trusts you. And I do. B-but, you shouldn’t have broken scene.”

Rin takes a moment to drag a short stool over for Tokoha to plant her feet on. Undoubtedly to give Tokoha a moment for her feet to adjust to standing again, Rin replies, “I wasn’t expecting you to…I wish you’d said something. Or signaled. I don’t know.”

Tokoha glances up at her wrists — they, too, were bound with her own manifested vines — and, catching the hint, Rin moves to free them as well. “Maybe we need more practice at this,” she says. “But…it was good. But are you okay?” she asks a moment later.

Rin — her flush fading, but definitely still noticable — laughs. “Mostly. It was easier than I expected to slide back into…old patterns, but harder to keep myself there when it was you.” She pauses, and then the flush is back. “Don’t read into that too much.”

Tokoha laughs again, and steps down from the stool with Hashima’s help. Then she catches Rin by the wrist that isn’t holding the scalpel, pulling the other woman close. “The war is over. Everything’s okay.” The reminder…feels necessary. Then, when Rin looks at her, appreciation and irritation and relief all mingling in her expression, Tokoha adds, smiling, “Because you lost.”

When the scalpel moves to Tokoha’s throat in mock threat, it isn’t really a surprise, nor is it when Rin’s mouth covers her own, shutting her up, at least for the moment.


End file.
